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Jaber F. Gubrium

The working premise of my research program is that no system of social rules is robust enough to understand its everyday application. Areas of study informed by this are aging and the life course, health and illness, human service organizations, constructions of family, institutional selves, and narrative analysis. Applying a critical constructionism, the goal is to make visible the assemblages of meaning that rationalization erases. Centered on the comparative ethnography of human service settings, I continue to explore and document novelty and pattern in troubles/problems reflexivity within the framework of what Erving Goffman called the "interaction order" and in tandem with a concertedly local brand of Michel Foucault's concept of "discursive practice." I am also founding and continuing editor of the Journal of Aging Studies.

As for teaching, I offer courses in several substantive areas, including self and society, the sociology of troubles, aging and the life course, illness and caregiving, constructions of family, and institutional identity. I lead methodology seminars on constructionist social inquiry, qualitative methods, interview theory and technique, ethnographic fieldwork, and narrative analysis.

The selected publications listed below are organized by substantive areas of the program. These have ranged from ethnographic studies of human service settings across the life course, to deconstructions of and research on aging, dementia, caregiving, family as a social form, and institutional identities. For the convenience of those interested, links are provided to specific items.